Discover what happens after the break-up

Connection loss

Connection. It’s something we all yearn to have. It’s the one missing piece in a break-up that I don’t think is talked about often enough or at all. Sure we miss the person that left us. We miss hearing the “I love you’s.” We miss them dearly in fact. Hell, I got so used to hearing, it that my mind refuses to accept that she does not love me anymore, and wants to love someone else, is looking forward to it I imagine. But it there more to it.

I believe that if a relationship has true love there is a connection between the two people. And when there is no more relationship that connection is gone, and missed. And so we yearn for it again.

I do not feel connected, because well I’m not. I don’t feel loved, because I’m not. I’m not talking about friends or family. They love me, and I love them. But no friendship can take the place of a girlfriend laying on your lap, glancing up at you and saying spontaneously those special words. I miss them. I miss the times that I would be playing with a young child or baby, and I would steal a glance at her, and see her eye’s full of wonder and love. I felt loved. And I felt connected.

And now what I have is the half-hearted hope that I’ll get that from someone else. I’m sorry if that seems like a consolation prize. I don;t get her, so I’ll just get someone else. Like saying, “I didn’t get the job of my dreams and the one I’ve been studying for all these years, but that’s ok, I’ll find another dream.”

I’ve heard of positive thinking, but that does not resonate with me. It sounds like making lemonade out of lemon, or some such other “stiff upper lip” nonsense. You know I think there ought to be law that dumpers ought to hurt as much as the person they are leaving. Especially, if there is no reason to break-up to begin with. But of course if it did, then I suspect that break-ups and divorces would not happen as often as they do.

Reese you said it, there is not that much out there, and few women have not heard horror stories from their friends, but they insist on going out there anyway. I guess my problem is I think and feel you ought to be grateful to God when you have someone good to you and for you.

I digress, however, as my thoughts become more random and chaotic regarding the feelings I have throughout my day.

Connection. Being connected to someone, and they to you. Thinking about it rips my stomach in two. And so now I think I’ve gotten to the point that I just want numbness. And then the connection desire, the love desire, the feeling that is not the life I wanted for myself, will not hurt so bad.

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7 Responses

Ah Joe … let’s see if I can put this nicely and I mean I am really going to try to do just that, in spite of what your words may cause me to feel.

One of the reasons I keep going back to the ‘you should be over her’ line of thinking is that you should. In this heartfelt post, you even explain WHY you should be getting over her, or at least expiditing the process.

There was no ‘connection’. At some point in the last year to maybe 18 mos., you started to avoid what was really happening in your relationship. Period.

You carp about the foolishness of ‘positive thinking’. It take soo much more energy to feel bad, because nature isn’t that any living thing should feel bad. Whatever you pick out, from elephant to ant, from giant Redwoods to blades of grass, life is about coping and moving on with whatever circumstance you are brought into. You, IMO, willfully chose to act outside of nature and you are hurting yourself.

Not life. Not Tina. You. I mean, she cheated on you, took you for granted and did not return affection. I don’t know if you are that hell of a guy or not, but I do know that in the end, she could have done better by you. Then again, maybe she did, and you didn’t get the hint.

Women are notoriously bad at cutting you loose. Mookie did all kinds of crap that said there was hope at the time she was screwing over me. I had to take charge because that was her M.O. Maybe Tina felt like you would get the hint, and you wouldn’t.

Dude, that is on you.

I don’t believe she did you any favours, but I won’t believe all this harm you are telling yourself that she did. I mean, for you to concieve this in your mind, then sit down and type stuff like this, borders on the preposterous, since we have been over seven or eight months after our good byes.

You are right about the ‘lemon out of lemonade’, but wrong about the ‘stiff upper lip’. If lemonade sucks to you, it sucks. Screw it.

But the stiff upper lip is on target. You simply aren’t trying which is why it is nonsense to you. No one likes a quitter, no one at all.

Agreed, Big Mark. And I believe I shared with Joe before that mature women who are capable of giving him the love and commitment he wants aren’t attracted to men who can’t cope with the ups and downs of life. Period. It’s a liability to a woman with strength and integrity.

Sometimes the language of “connection” is a cover for “still being in love with the fantasy (and not the reality)” of the person you’re fixated on. Tina doesn’t sound like she was ever really a pillar of strength, maturity, independence, or committment. But Joe was smitten with her, and her “free spirit” eventually floated away. Joe… Please… Start actually learning something from this. You’ll need it…

Was she ever a pillar of strength, maturity, independence, or commitment? Interesting question. And how do I evaluate with out being bitter about the end? I mean does the end always show what was there throughout the relationship? Whenever I have said out of pain or frustrations that she must have never loved me, people say that is not true, things just change. We were together for 7yrs, which seems like a commitment to me, but of course when it came to getting married she didn’t move forward. Was it her, or was it something I’m missing as she has said. I don’t think so. If I was I think it would have been obvious during almost a decade together. Strength, she was certainly a support for me when I loss my beloved Nana, and of course she stood by my side in the hospital room, as my mother drew her last breath. My mom’s last words, two weeks before to her; “This is my daughter in law.” Just typing that makes me want to run to the bathroom. Independence, maturity,?????????????

You tell me Herside, I thought I had a good deal of those things, and yet here I stand a bit of a broken man right now. What did I miss? What should I have been looking for? What would show those things, early in a relationship? Cause what I thought I saw obviously did not mean a hill of beans.

I guess this is where things that are simple are being broken down and become complex again, like the inner workings of a single molecule.

The attachments I can see and feel. The ones that you have shared are some I can commiserate with. And yes, a total time of 7+ years is a commitment.

But on who’s end? People can play parts, and to be by your side during such an obvious time of need, isn’t that hard.

While that may have been part of the roots to what you believed was your committed relationship, the soil was poisioned. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have turn on you the way that she did.

Can’t get tired of saying, and it isn’t to ‘tell you so’, because I don’t believe in that. Tina had left the relationship a long time prior to any of this going on. You were holding on to your own images and hopes for the both of you.

Since this is something you were doing on your own, it really is up to you to let go and move on. You keep saying ‘how?’

First, you need to get up the courage to try. Then the ‘how’ will come to you.

Uh, I don’t even know you and I feel like a lousy eavesdropping lurker, but I’m going to add my two bits and hopefully it will help.

Life is like photography. We use the negative to develop.

That became my new philosophy after my two-year-old child was diagnosed with celiac disease. It was a life-changing moment (as it seems you have been through with your breakup). I could’ve crawled under my bed and cried when faced with a negative situation, but I rose to the challenge and picked up a new philosophy. If I could do it, you can too.